


Hold You Close (strike me down)

by zanni_1 (zanni_scaramouche)



Series: In Your Eyes (the light, the heat) [2]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Angst, Betrayal, Character Death Is Not Sterek, Character Study, Derek Hale & Scott McCall Friendship, Found Family, Gun Violence, M/M, Mafia AU, Mob Boss Derek Hale, Non-Graphic Smut, Past Peter Hale/Lydia Martin, Possessive Behaviour, Possessive Derek Hale, but not the happy kind, criminal activity, really - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-23
Updated: 2020-04-23
Packaged: 2021-03-02 04:48:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,798
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23799526
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zanni_scaramouche/pseuds/zanni_1
Summary: The first time he realises he’s fucked it's the fault of the corpse at his feet.Derek was molded to fill this role since childhood. Every waking day he puts on a puppet suit and plays the part, and plays it damn well. Some dancer is not a good enough reason to take it off.PART 2 - Reading Part 1 is highly recommended for comprehension.
Relationships: Derek Hale/Stiles Stilinski
Series: In Your Eyes (the light, the heat) [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1714648
Comments: 8
Kudos: 189





	Hold You Close (strike me down)

**Author's Note:**

> Here we go again aaaah
> 
> Wasn't gonna write more. I wrote more. Derek's POV and the flip side to this madness. Title for the series from Peter Gabriel but tbh not a fan of the song just the lyrics. Title for this Part was my own after I scoured the www for any sort of usable quote and came up with nothing. 
> 
> Again, this has been transferred from Larry to Sterek so sorry if there's any slips, I tried.  
> Enjoy!
> 
> IF YOU LOVE ME YOU'LL READ PART 1 FIRST SO THIS MAKES SENSE

The first time he realises he’s fucked there’s a corpse at his feet. Blood has seeped into the leather of his shoes, his silk shirt, his face where he’s wiped away sweat. There are five dead bodies on the ground, but only one catches his attention. Four of the names are easy to predict, to the passing stranger it would be easy to detect the bonds he has with the men they belong to. What’s caught him off guard is the crudely carved ‘Stiles’. The choking dread lodging itself in his throat is not from the grisly picture, it’s a result of acknowledging he’s not deeply connected to Stiles. He hadn’t realised he wanted to be.

Duke prepared him well. The right contacts, the right methods, the right thoughts and within the hour this situation will disappear into nothing more than a secret swallowed by the night. It’s a dance he’s familiar with. He resents the bastard every waking day knowing he was groomed and worse yet, knowing there’s no way to step out of the puppet role he was designed to perform. Theirs was a relationship that quickly surpassed the fallacy of paternal into thinly veiled contempt for each other's personalities, only put aside for the necessary professional respect.

They finish dealing with the brunt of the mess in silence. Peter keeps cutting glances like he’s waiting for Derek to acknowledge it, but he’ll be waiting a long time for a confession. So Derek had downplayed things when Peter warned him of the ruckus he’d been dealing with, so Derek had turned a blind eye to the sloppy work instead of confronting the new coked up kids. So Derek had been wrong. Derek wasn’t Deucalion, and if Peter thinks he could be doing better he should have stepped in when he’d had the fucking chance. They’ve had this conversation before. Infact, Derek’s pretty sure at this very moment they’re having it again with every passing glare.

After the last body is pitched into the back of a truck with fake plates and serial number grinded off Boyd retreats to the shadows with a phone to his ear, issuing orders for a proper cleaning crew to come by the back of the club and bleach the tiles of the pooling red. Derek got lucky with him. Knew the moment he took his hand he’d be holding on tight.

The choice Derek’s been presented with his newfound discovery is heavy on his mind. He runs his hands along his shirt and pinches the silk to wipe the tips of his fingers clean. Something blocks the taillight he’s been using to see, not that the red light had been particularly useful to begin with. Peter’s silence is loud enough to warn Derek he’s not going to like what comes after it. He rarely does these days.

“You going to tell your ballerina about the list he’s on?”

“No.” The simplicity isn’t designed to annoy Peter, but the slant of his chin says he thinks otherwise.

“Should I dig an extra hole to wait for him?” Derek scowls at his tone, already tired of listening. “You’re ludicrous not to tell him to duck when there’s a mark on his head.”

There are words poised to flatten Peter’s arrogant energy sitting on Derek’s tongue. It’s something Peter’s never understood since returning. Derek doesn’t hesitate over a loss for words, he uses moments of silence to hold in words too sharp. Peter knows each of Derek’s soft spots, no matter how well guarded Derek might try to keep them. The same is true in reverse. Derek himself had never fully understood the depth of love Peter had held for a few precious moments, and in the end being aware of the target painted on her back hadn’t helped Lydia. Derek’s not cruel enough to say her name when there’s still blood on Peter’s hands.

“Jackson is securing contact. Despite your burning rage over the sad loss of these beautiful creatures, don’t retaliate.” It’s an order given in vain, but he says it simply for the future moment he will be able to reference the fact he said it.

Boyd passes by to start up the car they’ll be taking and Derek peels away in time to march with him. The jacket he took off upon arriving still rests on the roof of the sleek car, now damp in the evening's chill, and he tosses it onto his seat to protect the leather. Before settling into it he straightens and looks at the stark outline of Peter smoking against the old truck’s bumper, painted in red with bodies piled out of sight behind him.

“Oh, and Peter,” He can’t see the piercing eyes, doesn’t need to when he’s felt them on his back for as long as he has, “If you see a bullet coming your way, I suggest you duck.”

The car’s engine purrs to life. Derek slides into the passenger seat and doesn’t look in the mirror to watch his uncle watching him.

He’d been cocky in his parting with Peter, but it quickly fades in the hum of the vehicle. He’s stoic in dismissing Boyd. The first step into the cold night air on his tiled driveway brings back the vivid feeling of being punched in the gut he’d felt upon arriving at the club. The tiles are spotless. He can’t look at them without seeing Stiles, pale and soaked in gore under the moonlight. By now the blood has irreparably damaged his shoes. With every step he feels the tackiness of it on his soles.

Somehow the unrepenting thoughts of Stiles have found a way to manifest the boy before Derek’s eyes. Pale and soaked in blue light. Caught off guard Derek spits a curse too loud for the stillness of his bedroom.

He’s fucked. Everything he’s ever been taught demands he drag the soft skinned body from his bed and forget his face. It’s not been that long, they’ve not been too involved, there’s no certainty he’s faithful. Derek’s paralyzed in the dark with a moment of consuming indecision. Drying blood is crusting on his skin in the cracks he couldn’t reach and sweat from the nights heavy lifting starting to itch under clothes not made to breathe. All he can focus on is the soft strand of hair curling on Stiles’ temple.

He makes a decision.

Derek empties his pockets onto the side table and turns to the washroom with steps as light as he can make them. Under the stream of warm water he thinks through the myriad of outcomes his choice has, informing himself of every intricate way in which he is being selfish by leaving the man in his bed. He’ll allow himself this so long as he’s aware exactly how foolish he’s being. Already it feels too late to take it back, he’s starting to doubt there was ever a choice to be made but rather a struggle against the inevitable. His limbs are thrumming with impatience and yet he forces himself to clean every crease of his fingernails until they are spotless.

The long brush stroke of Stiles' spine lays bare to the room, the tempting expanse of his skin too much for Derek to be slow in his journey to feel it against his own. He kneels onto the bed and cages the smaller man below him in a swift press, his water warmed skin shocked by the cool touch of Stiles exposed back. Urgently Derek presses his mouth into Stiles’ neck just to feel the pulse singing between his teeth. It’s not reassurance he seeks, he tells himself, but when Stiles presses into him a surge of relief tightens his hands around Stiles’ slim waist and his teeth sink deeper. He turns Stiles over, the addicting glide of their skin keeping him close, and finally he’s granted brown eyes heavy with sleep and desire.

He needs to see Stiles feel it, this greed in his veins driving Derek into dangerous stupidity. Slowly he takes Stiles apart, savours the desperate sounds and frustrated tears. He’s being a bit cruel when he drags it out, but Derek deserves to witness the desperation clawing inside his own chest mirrored in Stiles’ eyes. As Stiles’ nails bite into him and his pleas start to fall apart into whimpers Derek pushes him over and follows quickly. Indulgently he watches where his own release marks the other man with proof of what they’ve done, what Stiles lets him take.

When Stiles returns from the washroom and slips into the bed, returns like Derek insists he knew he would, Derek folds around him. There’s not yet a grand connection tying the two of them together beyond the moments of heated skin and carnal behaviour, but he wants there to be.

He’s fucked.

The problem is. Well the problem is Derek doesn’t do connections that don’t start in blood. He and Peter share what runs in their veins. When Boyd carried him several miles the day they met Derek’s blood had drenched him so thoroughly it seeped into his pores. Due to a miscommunication on the playground and a finger pointed two inches too far to the left Scott had Derek’s blood on his knuckles from a well placed punch to the face. They’d sorted it out waiting in the principal's office, legs kicking idly in chairs too tall for their feet to touch the ground.

So it can’t be too surprising that the moment things move forward with Stiles there’s blood beading on his split lip. It’s also the moment Derek is uncomfortably faced with the realisation that time is narrowing down the paths his decision will take them down. The marks on Stiles' skin Derek didn’t make are glaring consequences he knew to expect, but that doesn’t mean he finds them any less infuriating.

It’s maddening to hear how little Stiles’ thought of him, especially when the only person he has to blame is himself. He chose Stiles specifically, knowing he wouldn’t look too deep. Derek’s spent too much time thinking about his own choices, his own wants, and too much time convincing himself he saw something of the same fire in Stiles. Every inch Stiles lets him take is gratifying, but the way he’s so quick to curse Derek’s name reminds him how much of a stranger they remain to each other.

What he does know about Stiles is the frustrated man on the couch is vividly real, as real as the coy pixie that saunters through the halls and the restless smoker outside the back door with little patience for small talk. All of these different sides to Stiles invict the same feeling in Derek’s gut, a violent hunger to lay claim and perversely show off. He does so now with a hand twisted in matted wet strands on the back of Stiles' neck, satisfaction rolling through him knowing his palm heats the spot still bearing the mark of his teeth. Stiles is limp in his hold, curling into him in a way Derek’s only witnessed between the sheets. Stiles’ demand to be taken home is redundant. Derek wouldn’t have let go of him under gunpoint.

It’s quite alarming to have Stiles living in his house. Rather, it’s alarming how coming home to find Stiles tucked into his bed is immediately the most calming moment of the day. The world is spinning off course around him, the messes left by Blake’s lackies growing at a pace he struggles to keep out of public or police view, Peter is lashing out at anyone who breathes within eyesight, and Boyd is saved by a trip off the curb from walking into a bullet. Every day holds it’s own morbid surprise. Every night, dependable as clockwork, there’s warmth on the other side of the bed.

He lays in stony silence watching the light dance on the wall, ignoring the urge to pull Stiles across the sheets and take. The time for him to make the choice has passed, now it’s up to Stiles to make his own. Especially when every day it’s becoming more likely things will end with one of them in the ground. When Stiles’ hand curls around his stomach after two of the longest weeks of his life, Derek has to work to keep his breathing steady. The flame he’d kept at bay flares into a roaring inferno.

He makes Stiles work for it, wants to see him chase Derek over and over. And it’s exactly what he wanted, but the moment Stiles’ eyes meet his the intrusive vision of finding them vacant flickers into Derek’s mind and chills the marrow of his bones. He’s up and out of the bed as quickly as possibly, unable to stop the tremors in his hands. On muscle memory he dappens a cloth. He’s starting to understand Peter in ways he never wanted to.

Stiles pries it out of him, makes him reveal some of the weight he’s been carrying. It’s been a long time since Derek’s worn a vulnerable face. He’s got no idea what it looks like, but Stiles must have it mesmerized because he won't look away. In the pool’s blue light his eyes glow bright and alive. Not until sleep drags Stiles’ lids shut does Derek dare to blink.

He’s not surprised when Isaac calls him, just sad. It’s an unavoidable fact whoever tried to get to Stiles first would be the leak, Derek's made sure he was easy to find for that reason. Boyd is silent with the news. Derek’s not able to wait for the cleanup of a particularly nasty scene, now an obvious means of distraction, before he swipes the car keys.

He’s too soft. Duke never stopped telling him, and Derek hears it now, ringing in his cruel voice throughout the years. He wants to look his friend in the face and hear him out, wants to reason with him, wants to pretend there’s something that will soothe the sting of betrayal. It’s in this state of denial that he’s foolish enough not to turn Stiles away at the back door.

The brick corridor to the office is the same as it’s always been and leads to a sight he could draw blind. To see Scott running the club was to see a lion lounging amongst his pride. So amiable it was impossible to picture him anywhere else but surrounded by people. Derek could have let him go on scholarship, could have patted his friend on the back and let him go onto a life unknown. But how could he have? Peter was a family of circumstance, Scott had been a brother Derek chose.

Derek avoids looking at him behind the desk, unsure of his control when Stiles’ still in the room and unaware of who he’s sharing smiles with. A text comes through as Stiles leaves a step behind Scott, a message from Peter that Derek purposefully keeps his eyes from focusing on before swiping away. Dreading the coming hour he stands from the couch and adjusts his suit while taking measured steps.

He leans against the wall by the door. Thinks of every moment he’s spent in this room with the three men he considered family. Scott always laughed the loudest. He’d seemed so settled here, satisfied with this life in the shadows, and Derek had spent so long resenting his own growing responsibilities it hadn’t crossed his mind that Scott might have wanted more. So Derek had been wrong. Nothing new.

Scott walks past him with two glasses in hand. He takes the time to line them up with the other two on the desk, his back almost obscenely vulnerable. Derek knocks his head against the wall, unable to take the moment he’s purposefully been given. The glasses fill slowly in the silent room until they sit in an innocuous replica of opening day. Scott scrubs a hand through his hair and finally turns to sit in the chair, propping an elbow on the arm rest and his chin cradled in his palm.

For a moment their eyes meet, two men in a room with four glasses and eleven years between them. Scott’s eyes are red, his hands keep moving from his face to his hair, his foot tapping to a staccato beat. He looks like the school boy Derek used to know, easily anxious and teased for being quick to cry. He looks like the man Derek thought he knew.

“Waiting on you, Der.”

Derek aims at the wall behind Scott’s head and fires. Scott flinches at the crack of sound. Once he’s realised the bullet missed he rubs his palms over his face with a shaking breath while Derek watches like a statue from the other side of the room.

“Your turn.”

Scott grimaces, face paling with a meek shake of his head. “I’m not gonna shoot you.”

“Prefer to use your fist?”

Finally Derek feels it. An undeniable rush of hate. All he can see is two boys joking around in matching uniforms and he hates himself for bringing them both here, to this room, and turning them into these men.

Scott looks at him imploringly. “I’m serious, if you don’t do it they will.”

“They’re on the way.” Derek says the words as he thinks them.

He hadn’t considered outsiders showing up, making things messy when the real issue, the only one he wants to deal with right now, is sitting in front of him.

A gunshot shocks Derek into glancing at the open door beside him. They were already here. Stiles.

“Fuck” Scott’s got pure misery on his face now, but Derek doesn’t believe it. He’s stuck replaying the sound over in his head, begging himself to consider it was anything but the consequence of his decisions. He watches Scott sink one of the drinks with a jerk of his head and rub at his eyes. “I deserve it now.”

Shooting him is too easy. Derek needs answers, and once he’s pried them from Scott he’s burning Blake’s crew to ashes. With the hand not holding the gun he pulls his hair out of his face. The steel is warming in his palm, feeling more like an extension of his arm with every passing second.

He’s about to start in when Boyd shoulders out of breath through the door, “Peter’s handling some unwanted company.”

“Stiles?” It’s the only thing he cares to know.

Peter enters in time to answer, “Peachy.”

It's more altering than one word has any right to be, stumbling Derek back into apprehension. Boyd’s the first to see the glasses on the desk, and Derek feels the recognition come over him. Peter’s attention is only a moment behind. Scott shoves himself out of the seat looking ill.

“Come on,” he pulls on the ends of his hair, “I screwed up! I started using their shit, next thing she’s hammering me to start selling on the floor. It’d never happen with you owning the place, Derek. They were talking stupid amounts of cash, okay? I was high and shit got messed, so for the love of fuck, someone shoot me because I can’t keep looking at you.”

“Don’t.” Derek raises his voice and hand at Peter before he manages to get his gun aimed. His eyes don’t waver from Scott’s, even when he hears someone else approach the doorway. They’re all lucky Boyd is smart enough to have a silencer on, the shots loud but far from deafening beside him. The knocked crystal shattering on the floor, however, is an ear-splitting shock. Derek instinctively shields his eyes from flying shards and misses the moment Scott pulls out his own gun.

“Enough, Scott.”

“You crazy fucks, I’m done. I can’t play these stupid games like you, can’t make you trust me again. I can’t fix it!” Derek studies him, the ruddy face of a nine year old boy profusely apologizing for punching the wrong person.

“Derek,” Peter curses, but his focus is on the gun in Scott’s hand and not the man it belongs to.

“No one is shooting him.” He roars. How did they get here? How did Derek let this happen?

Scott’s desperate though, and desperate men are unpredictable. The glint in his eyes is the only warning the moment he lifts his gun and points it at Derek.

It’s the loudest second of Derek’s life as two guns fire near in sync. The impact of a body thrown into him hits his chest and he’s forced to his knees with momentum. The ringing in his ears is so incessant he feels like he’s entered a waking dream. Peter’s hair brushes his face, he’s cradled against Derek’s chest and slumped half in his chest. Derek looks down to see a dark patch blooming on his uncle’s stomach. Boyd’s there with quick hands making sure Derek’s pressing down hard enough on the wound. His mouth is moving but Derek shakes his head at the muffled nonsense, still waiting out the ringing in his ears.

It’s oddly peaceful without the noise of the world. His chest expands slowly with a deep breath. Over Boyd’s shoulder he sees the brogues Scott’d been polishing three weeks ago. Traces of the oil’s persistent scent still lingers.

Sound comes back to him in the way of Peter’s laboured breathing and Boyd’s steady voice as he speaks on the phone to Deaton. Stiles has appeared on the couch, having come in while Derek was drifting. The moment to breathe is over. He pulls his puppet suit back on and starts running a list of the things he immediately needs to handle. Boyd works with him, Peter pissily chiming in while bleeding on Derek’s suit until Deaton finally arrives to stabilize him.

He and Boyd continue to progress through the list. Derek does so without looking at anything other than his hands and isn’t prepared for the moment Boyd slips something into them. A phone with a cracked screen, it lights up with a photo of four smiling boys. Derek blinks once. Hands it back.

“Wipe it.”

Finally the clean up crew arrive and he’s spent as long as possible not looking at Stiles. Now he scans him, catalogs every detail methodically to judge if he should have Deaton check on him next.

“Stiles.”

Brown eyes squint open, slow to adjust to the closeness of Derek’s face. Then he’s got an armful of the boy. There will be time to breathe again when the mess is cleared and the night obscures the truth into myth. Still, he can feel the mask he wears slip as Stiles curses him with a shake in his voice. Derek’s hold is too tight to be comfortable, but Stiles only presses closer.

**Author's Note:**

> Find me and graphics for this and all of my stories on tumblr :)  
> https://zanniscaramouche.tumblr.com/tagged/Blue-Light
> 
> Any time is a good time to leave a comment <3


End file.
